Surviving the Apocalypse
by Margay96
Summary: Ever since the Apocalypse, Wade has been losing touch with reality. Enter Peter: a young man who has somehow managed to survive alone in the Raider-infested city and given Wade a reason to keep on living. Assuming he isn't just another hallucination, that is.
1. Sunset

There were a lot of things that Wade missed; hot showers and cold drinks being among the first things that usually sprang to mind. Now though, staring at his decrepit surroundings, of which only shards of splintered glass and twisted signposts served as evidence that yes, this had once been a city, he was starting to think differently.

The sky had turned gray a long time ago, casting the rubble-strewn landscape in a tragic hue. His eyes skimmed over the toppled buildings and cars buried under just enough debris to make any form of rescue futile. Not that a recovery would do much good, the streets had long become a minefield of boulders and rusty pipes anxious to reach out and trip even the most sure-footed of scouts.

No sane person ventured into the city anymore. The shops had long since been cleared out, and there was no food left to speak of, or at least nothing edible. In short, wandering the city was an unnecessary risk, and that was even _before_ the Raiders had shown up. Nowadays, to go there was to die.

Which of course begged the question of why he, Wade Winston Wilson was even there in the first place.

The answer had seemed so clear to him just moments ago, something tangible and solid, heavily nestled in his heart. But now...? Wade saw it for what it was. It was squishy at best, its foundation too fragile to be built upon. He wondered at not having noticed it earlier.

He supposed he had been trying to find some connection to humanity. Not his own, heaven knew that had run away a long time ago, it's tail tucked firmly between its legs, but simply to humankind as a concept, proof that things hadn't always been this way.

He was one of the very few who remembered a time before the invasion. Even now, there were those who insisted that there had never been an invasion- that the skies had never opened up and rained down hell's nightmares upon them. And still there were others who acknowledged the invasion, but insisted that it had occurred way before their time, certainly too long ago for anyone to be able to remember.

Sometimes Wade questioned his age. He seemed to be thirty something, as far as he could discern. It was hard to tell with the scars raking their way across his face and body. The scars were ever present shifting snakes, resting beneath his skin, each day slithering somewhere new. Which begged the question, if Wade didn't even know the intricacies of his own body, how did he know what was the truth? What he perceived with his own convoluted mind? Or the interpretations from the equally corrupted surrounding him? But the pain was real enough, constantly burrowing its fangs deep into Wade's skin, so he supposed that this must be reality, that perhaps he wasn't dreaming after all. Whether he was lucid or not was another matter entirely, and one of which he was not sure that he could ever find an answer to.

Not that he had never tried.

Which brought him back to his reason for coming here at all to this godforsaken place. He sat perched atop what at some point had probably been a fairly large and impressive statue, his hands raw from the climb up. The wind whistled around his ears, hot and persistent in its quest to topple him over. Wade adjusted his grip, determined not to let it succeed, and peered out into the gray haze. It was only after the sky had muted into black that Wade allowed himself to fall back in resignation.

He remembered sunsets. He knew that they had existed. He recalled how every night the sky had been flooded with vibrant reds and pinks and little dashes of lavender sprinkled amongst the clouds. They were stark in his mind, crisp in their natural beauty, but now? Now they were gone and the sky was as ugly as the rest of the world.

His memory was fuzzy at best and nonexistent at worst, but the way the sky had exploded each night before dying was one of the few things that he could actually remember clearly. If he couldn't count on his sunsets, what _could_ he count on? He'd had false memories before, but somehow he couldn't bring himself to admit that the sunsets he remembered had been a lie. It had been a constant in his life, the one thing he could depend on. Even when he had been squirreled away beneath the earth, hidden away from the world, they had allowed him a small mercy in the form of a tiny smoke-stained window from which to watch the sunset. It seemed ironic how, in those dark times, a dying sun was the only thing to brighten up his life.

Wade heaved a great sigh and allowed his eyelids to slip closed. He was losing his grip on reality. He knew he needed to move. If he couldn't find shelter before dawn he was a dead man, but now, sucking dust into his lungs with every rattling breath, he couldn't find it in himself to care. He stayed exactly where he was, splayed out against the rough stone high above the city (or at least what remained of it) and drifted off into a fitful sleep.


	2. Sunrise

"Hey." Something was poking him in the ribs. "Hey, you alive man?"

Wade kept his eyes firmly shut. If he didn't open his eyes, he didn't have to wake up. He could still pretend this was all a dream. He didn't want to open his eyes just to be greeted by the slimy grin of a foul-nosed Raider or worse, the bleak expanse of unbroken sky above him.

"Hey man, if you're dead, Imma take your stuff."

Wade wrinkled his nose in confusion. That didn't _sound_ like a Raider. Come to think of it, those weren't claws skating over his flesh either. A hand snaked its way down to his boots and what Wade identified as fingers started to undo his laces. Okay, that was decidedly _un_ Raider-like behavior.

Quick as a whip, Wade kicked his foot up and into something solid and flipped himself over onto the shoe thief. He wasn't _quite_ as agile as he had hoped to be, and he nearly took the long fall to meet the pavement below. Fortunately however, thanks to the squirming of the young man beneath him, he was thrown violently to the opposite side, landing unceremoniously on the kid's face. He quickly wriggled down and pinned the other man's arms above his head and sat on his legs so that they would stop trying to kick him in the head.

"Nobody touches my stuff," Wade growled lowly, his face inches away from the other man's. "Certainly not some twinkly princess-haired mook. Thought you could sneak up on me, eh?" Wade paused and contemptuously regarded the man trapped between his legs. "Who the fuck are you anyway? Haven't seen you on the reserve before, and I think I would've noticed a face like _that_." Wade was of course referring his chiseled brow and fiery hazel eyes that threatened to wrench his head from his shoulders, not the obviously mangled nose currently leaking blood into the space between them.

"Who the fuck am I? Who the fuck are you?" With that, the man bucked his hips up and Wade went flying, just barely managing to find purchase in the cracked stone before he started to truly fall. He had to admit, he was impressed. The kid had some moves.

With a heaving groan, Wade pulled himself once again back onto the statue. He paused momentarily to roll the stiffness out of his shoulders. Sleeping up here on the exposed rock of some long deceased bald guy's head had been fatuous in more ways than one apparently.

"Ya know," Wade groaned as his back finally unkinked itself with a shark cracking sound. "You're pretty strong for a kid. What's your secret? Pilates? Step aerobics?" He tossed a glance back over his shoulder, effectively decompressing his neck in the process, to size up his new companion.

The kid was gone.

Wade looked around wildly, his head spinning like the bobbleheads he used to collect. He was standing on a rounded slab of stone _maybe_ ten foot square, if that. There was nowhere that the young man could have hid himself. Wade was alone.

A gruesome thought struck him and he quickly dashed to peer over the edge. With a sinking feeling, he traced the denticulate rubble with his well-trained eyes, scanning for an all too familiar crimson stain.

Nope. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. The only bits of red he saw was his own flaking plasma remnants from his earlier ascent. There was no large splash of color or even a body to suggest that the kid had met an unfortunate and early demise.

Wade scratched his head. There was no earthly way the kid could have gotten down that quickly, and certainly not without hurting himself. He supposed it must be easier going up than down, but still. It must have taken him at least half an hour to climb up here and, well, he had muscles. The kid, on the other hand, was built like a dry twig. There was no way he had done it in what, sixty seconds?

And here was Wade's problem. He knew, logically, that it was impossible for anyone to vanish like that. But here he was, alone. Wade's first instinct was to rule it yet another hallucination, but…Wade rubbed his left elbow and winced at the stinging pain that shot through it. Contradictory information. Wade knew nothing had transpired, and yet here he was, in pain. Wade lived in a perpetual state of confusion and dissonance, cherry picking his way through reality.

Wade took a long breath to steady himself. Okay. Mr. Cheekbones McSexyface, obviously not real. The pain coursing through his left arm? Definitely real. He glanced down at his shoes. The laces on his right curb stomper were halfway undone. The problem was, he couldn't remember if he had even tied them in the first place.

Wade groaned and dragged his hand down his face in frustration. This trip was supposed to reaffirm his sanity, not confuse it further.

He took stock of the shortening shadows and glanced up at the sky, now noticeably a few shades paler. He estimated that he had maybe an hour before it was bright enough for him to become Raider-chow. Great, one hour to pick his way through the maze of dilapidation. Well this was going to be fun.

He had just started to search for an easy way down, preferably one with sturdy footholds, when he saw it. It was just for a second, and it was brief enough that Wade wasn't entirely unsure that he had imagined it. He trained his eyes intently on the spot where it had vanished in between two monolithic boulders. _There_. His eyes caught the same flash of cinnamon he'd seen before. It was a mop of hair- just as stringy and unruly as before.

He made a mental note of where the man was heading before throwing himself off of the statue. He slid down just slow enough to avoid death, but heedless of any other dangers the unforgiving stone presented. One harrowing and admittedly painful ride later, he was tearing off after the man he had seen.

His right sleeve was entirely nonfunctional, and Wade was pretty sure he had lost the seat of his pants if the hot breeze was anything to go by, but he didn't care. The boy from before was _real_. At least Wade hoped so. It would be really embarrassing showing back up at camp and having to explain how his disheveled appearance came from chasing a hallucination.

His sleeve kept smacking him in the face as he ran, making an annoying flapping sound and flinging tiny rocks in his face. He ripped it off in annoyance. In retrospect, he probably should have kept it; it was much easier to repair a jacket than to scavenge for a new one. Whatever. He didn't have time to stop. He needed all the speed he could get. He could actually see the kid now, picking his way between the rubble unhurriedly, apparently oblivious to the two hundred something pound mercenary barreling towards him at full speed.

Wade threw his hand up. "Wait! Hey dude, wait!" The kid looked back over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes in annoyance before returning to his task at a quicker pace than before. Wade marveled at the way he was able to effortlessly bounce over the obstacles in his way. With practiced moves like that, it was apparent that the kid had been here for quite some time. Wade stared for a second before he realized that watching the kid swing effortlessly over a large sheet of metal meant that he was getting away. He swore and started hustling toward the younger man once again.

"Hey man, seriously. I'm going to chase you until stop and talk to me." Despite Wade's words, the other man didn't stop, but he did pause long enough for Wade to weasel up and snag the man's ankle.

The man looked down from where he was scaling a particularly nasty piece of sheetrock. "Fuck off."

Wade gaped openly at the man's asperity. "Is that anyway to treat someone you just met?"

"You broke my nose." He shook off Wade's hand and resumed his ascent. Wade took a second to admire this new view before dashing under a precariously perched beam and cutting him off on the other side.

"My name's Wade. What's yours?" Wade stuck out his hand for a handshake.

The other man curled his lip in annoyance. "Stop following me."

"Stop following me? Well that's a weird name." The other man just glared at him. "Oh, come _on_ , it was a _joke_. You do know what a joke is, right?" Again, wade was met with a steely stare. "Look, I just wanted to say hi, maybe get to know you a little bit. It's not every day you run into someone in the middle of a deserted wasteland.

Now, come on. What's your name? Or your favorite color? Or, well, anything really. Please, just say _something_ so I know this isn't just my brain dicking with me."

Peter paused, apparently weighing his options. Eventually he sighed and let out a begrudging "Peter. Blue. Now please leave me alone."

Wade awkwardly licked his lips. "You know, I feel like you liked me better when you thought I was dead."

"Maybe you are. Maybe I'm just a figment of your imagination." Peter wiggled his fingers in front of Wade's face. "Close your eyes and count to ten and let's find out."

Wade pouted. "You're just saying that to so that you can ditch me"

Peter let out a puff of breath in exasperation. "Whatever man, sun's coming up soon, so either scram or get eaten. It's your choice."

"Or, and I'm just spit-balling here, so hear me out, I could come with you."

Peter barked out a laugh. "Fat chance, you'd just slow me down. Now, if you'd excuse me…"

"Wait!" Wade could see Peter tense his shoulders in aggravation, but he turned back to face the merc anyway. "I, uh, I'm not exactly sure where I am."

"You don't know where you are," Peter repeated, looking for all the world like someone had just handed him a bag filled with nothing but licorice jellybeans.

"Er, yeah, see I wasn't a hundred percent with it when I decided to stroll out here, and then I got all turned around chasing after you, and well, now I'm lost." Wade could feel his cheeks growing hot under Peter's scrutiny. He could only imagine how he looked, his suit was in tatters. He was one-sleeved and bare cheeked in more ways than one, with all his scars bare to the world. He wished he had thought to bring his mask with him, but then, it wasn't like had had been expecting company.

"You're lost," Peter echoed.

Wade nodded furiously. "Yeah, so you know, any help at all would be-"

"Good luck with that." With that, Peter retreated over a small pile of debris, and Wade was forced to duck to avoid the shower of pebbles he left in his wake.

Wade stared in disbelief at the spot where Peter had disappeared. Peter had abandoned him, and now he was alone and completely turned around in a sunlit raider-infested city.

Fuck.


	3. Darkness

Wade would have liked to say that he handled himself with dignity and poise. Hell, he would've liked to describe his current actions as anything other than 'curled up and rocking in a corner'. It wasn't his finest moment. To be fair, it wasn't his worst either, but that hardly made it any less emasculating.

It was dark. Too dark. The obsidian night was invading his mind, its crushing tendrils sending him back to the cold, dank underground of his nightmares. He flinched as shadowy knives cut themselves into his flesh.

Wade drew a shuddering breath and forced himself back to the present. He grounded his fingers into the filth lining the floor and pressed his shoulders back into the comforting solidity of the walls behind him. He let out another long breath, doing his best to center himself.

It wasn't surgical steel he was afraid of; it was the snagging claws of the Raiders. He wasn't _afraid_ of the darkness; it was his friend. The shadows cloaking him were possibly his only real form of concealment against the acute senses of the raiders. Even with his weapons, Wade doubted he could find better protection than the obscurity the shadows provided him.

He rocked his head back against the cool stone, a welcome relief from the torrid air. He had wedged himself into a fairly defensible corner. It wasn't exactly the best if he was forced to beat an impromptu retreat, but he hadn't wasted much time on finding a decent hiding spot. He had been much more concerned with staying alive long enough to fight for his survival. Besides, he reasoned, it wasn't like he was going to be given much of an opportunity to escape one way or another.

Not much was actually known about the raiders. Very few encounters actually resulted in survivors, but as always happens with these sorts of things, there were rumors. Conspiracy theories and outlandish cries for attention were mixed together with little rainbow sprinkles of truth to create one convoluted milkshake of a beast. It had always been disputed what exactly the raiders looked like. Nobody seemed to know if they had fur or scales or some terrible combination of the two; even across the survivors, the stories always seemed to become a little muddled and confused. There were even those who argued that they were born from the inky darkness itself, and that was why they never came out at night, because they would simply melt away. The only thing that anyone seemed to agree on were the claws. The claws and their unnatural despicable and absolutely ruthless nature that was.

 _Clink_

Wade froze, shaken out of his thoughts by an ominous sound from across the store. Wade peered straight out from his encampment, wishing he had had the foresight to find something to use as a shield. His ears followed the sound to the women's intimate's section, which he would have found hilarious if it wasn't so goddamn _terrifying._ The plasticy scrape of nails against painted concrete continued until, with a crash, a Raider stumbled its way through a display and staggered into a column of light filtering its way through the worn slots in the ceiling.

It was _huge_ , easily twice his size. It certainly wouldn't be winning any beauty contest anytime soon, but there was a certain elegance to the way it half slithered, half dragged its way across the floor. Wade closed his eyes for a brief second as he prepared himself for the harsh reality of what was about to happen. He opened them as he felt something hot and gooey trickle its way down his face.

It was drooling on him.

"Gross," Wade muttered without thinking. Suddenly, he got a _really_ good view of the beast as all four of its bulbous red eyes snapped onto him. He then got an even _better_ view as said beastie sunk all four of its nine inch long canines into the muscle of Wade's left shoulder. Wade screamed as the Raider lifted him off the ground, his hands grappling against the oily pelt for leverage.

Finding none, he drew his right hand to his chest and withdrew the knife he kept stashed there. It was becoming hard to see, since Wade was positioned directly opposite the Raider's monstrously huge nostrils, and a mucus-y slime berated him every time the monster breathed out. Regardless, Wade slashed upwards blindly and, despite the excruciating pain, grinned when he felt resistance and heard the Raider's pained bellow.

His victory was short lived however, as the Raider's tail whipped around and tightened its grip around Wade's ankle like some kind of perverted monkey. He yelped in surprise and tried wriggling like a trout to shake it off, but once again, he was thwarted; this time by something decidedly _pointier_.

The claws. He had forgotten about the claws. There were only three of them on each arm, which made for a total of six, but that was more than enough. The claws of a Raider were no joke, and had graced many a bloody sonnet and nightmare-inducing bedtime story. For good reason too; a single well-placed stab or slash from even one razor sharp claw was enough to put even the most thick headed scout underground. Now, as Wade stared dully down at the two claws protruding a foot out from either side of his chest, he was simply glad that they hadn't pierced any major organs.

Not that that would matter in a moment anyway.

The Raider withdrew its teeth from Wade's shoulder and once more swung its head around so that they were face to face. He could just feel the barest brush of enamel against his forehead when he heard it.

It was a whooping noise so close that the Raider abandoned its task and looked around blindly in the dim light for its source. Wade wasn't entirely sure what happened next because all of a sudden the world went sideways, but he heard a distinct cracking noise coming from somewhere down by his right hip which was soon followed by the pained roar of the Raider and then all of a sudden he felt himself being slammed into the ground.

On the upside, the Raider was no longer _inside_ him, a fact that he was immediately grateful for. On the downside, this apparently meant that he was in even _more_ pain than before.

He groaned and forced his eyes open. His earlier dizziness caused by the blood loss had been made even worse by his new head injury, and he wasn't _exactly_ sure what he was looking at.

The Raider seemed to have grown a new tooth, this one pointing up straight through the roof of its mouth. It took Wade a moment to realize that no, that wasn't a tooth, it was actually the broken shard of the Raider's own claw. His eyes trailed down to the Raider's blood-soaked hand, where he could clearly see two claws covered with his own internal fluids and another obviously shorter one sporting jagged edges and spurting out blood with all the fervor of a ketchup dispenser. Wade giggled. He knew the blood loss was making him just a bit delirious, but right now, watching the Raider stagger around like his father after a bender, Wade laughed harder than he had all month.

He felt two strong arms push at him, and somehow Wade understood through his delirium that he was supposed to _move_ , that it wasn't safe here, but he couldn't force his limbs to obey him, and instead they just flopped around uselessly. He heard an exaggerated sigh above him and those same arms reached under Wade and lifted him up and up. He suddenly gripped onto the muscular shoulder across which he was slung, fearful that he might become too light and start to drift away.

"Hey, would you stop it? That kind of hurts." Distantly, Wade thought he recognized that voice, and right before he sunk into unconsciousness he thought he saw a flash of cinnamon hair, but his eyes suddenly became too heavy to hold open, and Wade surrendered his train of thought and instead allowed himself to drift back down and slowly sink back down into the alluring blackness of sleep.


	4. Daybreak

It took Wade a moment to remember where he was. His head and shoulder hurt, and he was currently being rhythmically jostled against a solid wall of muscle. Something, Wade assumed it was a shoulder, was digging into his pelvis. He wiggled his hips in an effort to settle into a more comfortable position.

"I'm going to assume that you're awake then," came a voice from somewhere both above and behind Wade. Wade responded by groaning dramatically. "I don't suppose you care to walk by yourself?" Peter moved his shoulder roughly in an attempt to dislodge the larger man.

Slightly put off and determined to fuck with his apparent knight in shining armor, Wade gripped tightly onto the only handholds he could find. "Hello? Who's there? Is- is that you God?" A hand reached down to swat Wade's hands away from the asscheeks that he had latched onto.

"It's Peter you idiot." Wade smirked at the exasperated tone of Peter's voice; if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was how to get on somebody's nerves.

"Peter?" Wade gasped in mock surprise. "Saint Peter, guardian of the pearly gates? As in heaven? Gosh, that's a shocker, I mean seriously, who fucked up? Someone really should be fired if they think that I belong up _here._ Wait, does this mean that I'm _dead_? Oh, say it isn't so! Please, Saint Peter, explain to me the intricate details of my mortality!"

" _Oh_ , that _does it_!" Wade felt himself flipped up and then slammed down onto the asphalt. Too late, Wade realized that it may have been more prudent to have simply recited that lame pickup line about heaven and angels than too further provoke the obviously agitated man. "Look _pal_ , I don't know you, and I certainly don't _owe_ you anything. I came back for you against my better judgement." Peter started to walk away. "If you're going to be a moron, don't expect me to stick around. I put my ass on the line for you once already; I'm not overly eager to do it again." Without turning around, he flicked his hand up in a two-fingered salute. "Have fun. Don't die."

Wade watched as Peter started to slowly sashay away. Today just was not his day. Wade might be pretty handy with guns and swords, but that was against other humans. Clearly, he was no match for an actual honest to goodness Raider. He shuddered as he recalled the ease with which the claws had carved through his flesh.

He started to get up to follow his savior, but a painful pinching in his shoulder made him hesitate. He stayed where he was, down on all fours like a beggar groveling before a king. "Wait! Peter!" Wade forced his voice to remain strong despite the fact that he currently felt like shit run through a blender. " _PETER_! You can't just _leave_ me here! Not _again!_ Not…not after what happened last time." Wade let his voice trail off as he saw the other man hesitate. It was hard for Wade to admit that he needed help at all; it always had been. But right now, forced to choose between death and the desecration of his pride, Wade would gladly choose the latter. He was a survivor, always had been. He had survived his father, he had survived the cancer, and he had survived the war. It was only thanks to Peter however, that he had survived his most recent brush with death. Without him, Wade wasn't sure that he could survive another. Certainly not in his present condition anyways. Desperate, Wade flung out one last "Peter!" at the top of his lungs. He held his breath as Peter slowly turned back around to face him.

For a moment, neither of them so much as twitched. Peter stared back at Wade with dead eyes, and Wade stared back with eyes as bright as the surrounding daylight. Gradually, so as not to startle Peter into bolting away again, Wade let out the breath he was holding. He kept his eyes trained on the younger man, determined not to let him out of his sight. All too soon however, the tender stillness was broken as Wade once more begged Peter to stay.

"Peter, please. Don't leave me. I need you." Wade put all of his emotion into those last three words. Every iota of self-preservation and melancholy that he had been carrying with him pushed its way to the surface and jumped inside those three little words. He wished he could say it was powerful, touching even, but that was far from the truth. The words needled out of his mouth in a pathetic little whine, and when Wade forced his head up to gauge Peter's reaction, he could tell that it had all been for naught. The man was gone.

"Peter! Pet-mphgh" Wade's shouting was muffled by a grimy hand that clapped across his mouth. A very, _very_ familiar hand. He looked up in surprise at Peter glaring down at him. Peter was squeezing him just a bit too tightly, and the way he swung Wade's chin up to look him in the eye was uncomfortable at best, but at this moment in time, Wade wouldn't have traded it for anything else.

"Stop shouting, you idiot. Unless you _want_ to fight more Raiders? I'm sure they'd be glad to see you again. They always _love_ an easy meal." Seeing as Peter still held control over his mouth, Wade shook his head furiously. Or at least he tried to. The kid had a grip of steel, and the best that Wade could manage was a pathetic wiggle. Peter seemed to get the message however. "Good boy." He let go of Wade's jaw and patted him on his cheek. "Now, either put up or shut up. I don't need any liabilities. Seriously though, can you walk? 'Cause I mean, I may be strong, but you could also stand to lose a few pounds."

"What? I am not overweight!" Wade smoothed a hand down his pectorals and slapped his abdomen. "This is all muscle baby! I'm talking a primo-cut piece of Grade-A angus beef steak here!" Wade bit back the urge to add 'and just as delicious' for fear of losing him again. As it was, his comments earned him a less than subtle eye roll. "Seriously though, I'm good to walk. In excruciating pain, sure, but yeah, good to go." Forgetting about his shoulder, Wade thumped his fist against his chest in a manly display and promptly collapsed on the ground from shock.

Peter shook his head. "You are a fucking idiot."

"So you've said. Repeatedly. You really aren't a very nice person." Seeing as Peter wasn't planning on helping him up anytime soon, Wade was forced to stagger up on his own.

"Nice gets people killed."

"It also gets you friends. Vinegar? Not so much.

"Yeah, well, I'm not your honey, so stop pretending that I am." Peter opened his mouth to say something else, but suddenly his eyes widened and he clamped his mouth shut. He motioned for Wade to get behind him. Looking over his shoulder, it was immediately apparent what had cause Peter's shift in mood.

It was a Raider. It seemed smaller than the one they had encountered earlier, and not nearly as scary looking. For one thing, its eyes seemed comically large for its strangely narrow head and for another, its claws weren't the terrifying meter sticks of death Wade had faced earlier, but rather the much smaller and thankfully less intimidating kitchen knives of destruction.

Wade grinned beneath his mask and squared his shoulders. Knives he could handle. He draped himself across Peter's shoulders, taking full advantage of the stability the younger man provided and slowly withdrew his gun from its holster on his right leg. Cautiously, he took aim and pulled the trigger.

It was a perfect shot. A small blue hole appeared on the Raider's head, perfectly centered between its many eyes, Wade noted proudly, and started to grow bigger as it continued to bleed. The Raider took a confused step. And then, as Wade watched in horror, it took another. The raider shook its head, presumably to get the blood out of its eyes, and locked gazes with Wade.

Shit.

It let out a wheezing growl, not quite as full bodied as Wade had expected; but then, he had just shot it in the head. The noise might have even been cute if it weren't for the fact that the Raider was now lunging toward them as fast as it could over the uneven ground; its eager claws flexed and ready to strike.

Wade shrieked. A _manly_ shriek mind you, and proceeded to empty the remainder of his clip into the beast. After three more rounds to the head, the Raider finally faltered just short of eviscerating them both and collapsed to the ground. Relieved, Wade turned to Peter who in turn looked back at him less than pleased.

"What, _the fuck_ did you just do?" Peter asked, his hands clenching at his sides.

"Um, I just saved both our sorry asses, thank you very much. You know, a little _gratitude_ wouldn't hurt." He waggled his eyebrows and moved his hips in such a way that it would be impossible for Peter not to grasp what exactly it was that he had in mind.

Either Peter didn't notice or, quite possibly, didn't care because the next words out of his mouth were far from romantic. "You fucking idiot. You just killed us both."

"Uh, _no_ , I saved us both. Didn't you see my awesome and, if I may be so bold as to add, _incredibly sexy_ marksmanship skills?"

"Yeah, that's the problem," Peter growled lowly as he tackled Wade. "Didn't your mama teach you nothin'?" Wade's stomach was thrown for a loop as he suddenly felt his feet leave the ground. He looked down and-wow. They were _really_ high up. He turned and clung to peter with all four limbs and shut his eyes tightly, suddenly afraid that Peter intended to teach him a most painful, _permanent_ lesson. He winced as his shoulder started to throb again. It wasn't nearly as painful as before, but it still hurt like a son of a bitch. Ignoring the pain in favor of not falling to his death, Wade gripped onto the other man as tight as he could. Apparently satisfied that the merc wasn't going anywhere, Peter let go of him.

Wade cracked an eye open. They weren't just going up as he had previously thought. Now that both arms were free, Peter was using them to _swing._ Wade stared in bewilderment at the stringy material the man seemed to be shooting out of his wrist. No, not his _wrist_ , but rather the strange gadget encircling it. Wade looked on in fascination as Peter's middle fingers would brush against his palm at the apex of each swing and in turn seem to trigger some sort of release mechanism that ejected the white substance at a nearby building. He was about to ask Peter what they were when he realized that the other man was talking and probably had been this entire time.

"-seriously, don't go out after dawn, don't make loud noises, don't get the gremlins wet. Did you just crawl out of a hole or something? Isn't that like, the first lesson in survival 101?"

"I forgot," Wade muttered, half hoping Peter couldn't hear him.

"You forgot?! How the hell do you forget something like that? How are you even still alive?" Apparently, Wade could add super hearing in addition to super strength and wonderfully well-defined muscles to this kid's resume.

Wade thunked his head into the kid's armpit, unwilling to answer. Peter gave a brief grunt of discomfort, but thankfully dropped the subject.

"Look, you may be a moron, but at least you're a moron with eyes. Tell me if you see any trouble, would 'ya?" Peter requested conversationally, as if his current acrobatic feats were no less strenuous than a midday stroll. Wade nodded into his side and cracked an eye open.

"Trouble…you mean like that pack of Raiders to your right? The ones with exceedingly large and pointy teeth that look hungry?"

Wade felt more than saw Peter look over. "Shit. Okay, hold on tight. Trust me, I don't want to catch you any more than you want to be dropped." The raiders had managed to crawl all the way up to eye level. Wade counted maybe six or seven, which in his opinion, was six or seven too many. They shouldn't really cause that much of a problem though, they were still a good distance away, and it wasn't like they could jump…

Oh. _Oh_. That's what had Peter so on edge. Not the Raiders to the side, but the ones in front of them. Crawling on the building where Peter had attached his…sticky-line-thing.

"Uh, Peter, they're about to-"

"Wade, I _know_. Please, just hold _on_." It was at that moment that a single deft claw snapped the line and sent the boys into freefall. Peter snagged the next building over and did his best to launch them _away_ from certain death and Wade attempted to do his best impression of a koala.

He knew there were more Raiders hiding just out of sight simply by the never ending stream of expletives pouring out of Peter's mouth and that they often came just a bit too close by the amount of flipping and dodging that Peter was currently doing. He supposed that he could be helping, or at least keep his eyes open to act as a warning system, but Peter seemed to be doing just fine on his own and Wade _really_ didn't feel like throwing up at that particular moment in time. Maybe later, when he wasn't upside down and being treated like the world's most useless backpack.

Eventually though, the crazy spinning stopped, the ride smoothed out and Wade was able to open his eyes again. "Hey, uh, where are we going? Is it much farther? 'Cause my arms are getting kind of tired and I would really appreciate not dying today."

Peter snorted. "It's not much farther, and thanks to your shenanigans back there, we actually made better time than usual. It's that smaller building up ahead." He nodded his head in the direction they were headed.

"And this would be behind the bank?" Wade inquired.

"Nope." Peter's last swing brought them closer to the ground and he dropped easily into a practiced crouch. "You can get off now. We're here. Home sweet home."

Wade took a moment to remember how to move his limbs and managed to, miraculously, disentangle himself with some semblance of grace.

"You, you live _here?_ Why?" Wade spluttered, staring up at the needlessly detailed engravings scattered around the giant double doors hanging askew in what served as the entrance to a behemoth of a bank. "I mean, surely there was an abandoned apartment or penthouse or even an RV nearby."

"Why live in a bank? Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but things have a way of getting destroyed around here." Wade glanced around and noted how trashed the surrounding area was. Peter shrugged. "Banks are built sturdy. They're safe. Beats living out in the woods, at any rate. No offense."

"None taken. You guys have your method of survival, I have mine. So far, it hasn't gotten me killed, so I think I'm doing just fine." Peter glanced behind them. "Speaking of survival, I think it best if we continue this conversation inside. We may not have left a scent trail, one of the many benefits of web-slinging, but they sure as hell recognized me, and they _definitely_ know where I live." He frowned at the pedestal he had been leaning on and stroked the misshapen lump of marble on it. "Stupid Raiders broke my favorite lion." He gave it one last pat and trudged up the stairs. Following him, Wade could see just how much damage this place had taken. The doors weren't just in disrepair, they had literally been torn off of their hinges. He could see the claw marks etched into the door and marring the surrounding engravings. He was just about to ask how a place with no doors could be considered safe, when an ominous hissing noise made them both freeze.

"Fuck me sideways," Wade muttered. "Not again." This Raider was huge. It must have been hiding up on the roof waiting for them, because it now filled the doorway, effectively trapping them inside. "I hope you have a plan, Wonderboy, because I sure as shit don't."

"Yeah, I do." Peter replied equally as soft. He fisted his hand into Wade's shirt and _yanked_. Follow me!" He took off sprinting down the hallway and Wade was forced to follow, the Raider hot on his heels.

"How the hell is this a plan?!" Wade yelled after him, struggling to keep up. Fortunately, the Raider's immense size seemed to be giving him trouble as he wasn't able to make the sharp turns in the narrow hallway quite as fast as Wade, and it seemed to be having trouble finding purchase on the smooth floors.

Eventually, Wade managed to catch up to Peter who was standing next to an open bank vault. "Get in, Peter commanded, jerking his head toward the cell. "But wipe your feet first. I literally just swept the floors, and I have no intention of doing it again today.

Wade glance down to see a tattered doormat. "What? But-"

"I SAID WIPE YOUR FUCKING FEET, WADE!" Peter shouted as the Raider turned the corner. Wade hurriedly knocked the dirt off his boots and leaped inside the vault, Peter spilling in right after him. A reverberating boom shook the room as the door was slammed shut. Hurriedly, Peter keyed a code into the pad by the door and a loud clicking noise was heard.

Peter turned and slumped against the door wearily. "See? I told you I had a plan."


End file.
